Big questions are those that are asked and answered by every person in every generation for as long as humans have been humans.

We do not tend to invent completely novel answers to these questions. Rather we shape our personal answers as we grow. We select and weave together the answers that resonate with our experience and acquired beliefs.

I woke up this morning thinking about this. These are the answers that resonate with me:

Yes, there is Justice in Life.

This is difficult or impossible to see for millions who are denied justice by others. The tragic loss of justice must clearly remind us of how essential justice is for there to be life.

There are Laws of Nature, and if we act in accord with these our lives tend to be better than if we don’t. Ultimately it is better to do good than to do bad. It is better to help others than to only use them. It is better to forgive than to hold grudges and take reprisals. It is better to love than to hate. It is better to avoid disease and the causes of disease; and likewise, to avoid negative habits and their causes. It is better to help those who are down rather than to say “They deserve it,” and walk away. Ultimately, Justice depends on how we treat each other.

Then why do bad things happen to good people?

Nature is complex, and the laws of nature interact with each other in almost infinitely complex ways. We are not perfectly tuned into these laws and their interactions, and even if we have knowledge, the results are very hard to predict, or to influence with perfect precision. But as we learn more our results are better, and we can avoid problems and we can help each other avoid problems. And the more we continue to expand and share our knowledge, the more Justice we have. Much of the suffering that occurs in the world is in fact due to one group or another grossly ignoring the laws of nature. For example, only taking and hoarding, rather than sharing; only using rather than giving back and uplifting; only fighting back rather than looking for a new way.

Life is infinitely complex. We will not one day have all the details figured out, along with rational prescriptions for each possible complex chain of cause and effect.

And yet in the face of complexity it is possible to live simply while spontaneously increasing Justice in the world.

Living simply means to love, to forgive, to pay attention, to listen, and, in various expressions, to transcend our petty egos based on ‘me-first’ and ‘my group first’ – to build expanded egos that care for the good of all. These are ancient and true teachings from all cultures.

Healthy human minds have the ability to resolve disputes without animosity, without making, or defeating enemies.

Our brains and nervous systems are wired to gather as much data as the time and circumstances allow, and to then understand and evaluate a myriad of possibilities, risks, and opportunities, and then to come up with the best solution – that time and circumstances will allow.

This enables the owner of the mind (the person) to take action as quickly as needed, rather than wasting time and energy fighting internal battles for supremacy, inside her mind, or becoming frozen with fear of making a mistake – fear of losing.

A healthy mind welcomes and thrives on diversity of opinions, including contradictory ones.

Such a mind does this routinely and often without our conscious awareness, for example when we are listening to a voice that is difficult to hear, and trying to make sense of what is being said, and what the underlying meanings and implications are; or when we are looking at the sky for clues about the weather.

A healthy mind also consciously welcomes a diversity of data and opinions, for example, when participating in a valued and trusted team, working to find a solution to a complex problem.

A valued and trusted team is like a healthy mind.

In a healthy team, as in a healthy mind, there is no dread of differences, of complexity, of apparent contradictions, or of periods of uncertainty. There is also a willingness to take action to test ideas before final acceptance or rejection of a possible interpretation or solution. There is a strong sense of working together, rather than competing.

Yet in a team there can be a healthy sense of competition; which is healthy only so long as the competition does not become more important than working together to solve a common problem.

A healthy, highly-functioning team is an example of a group mind.

So, actually, we already know how to create group minds. We do it all the time. We use common purpose and common sense, management techniques, group facilitation methods, scientific procedures, and methods for publishing, distributing, sharing, testing, and comparing data and knowledge. We now use the Internet, high-speed, intelligent communications technologies, social media, complex, and data-intensive analytics.

A healthy, highly-functioning community, society, nation or world are larger examples of a group mind.

However, such examples are often more aspirations rather than realities, especially as the scale increases. But they are all possible. Very possible.

Creating healthy, large-scale group minds is more difficult

The problem is lack of health. Lack of wholeness. A dysfunctional society, or group mind, is full of emotion-laden biases, fears, animosity, internal hostilities, greed, bitter or violent competitions (winner-take-all), or is simply deeply fragmented and incapable of making good decisions. All of these traits are indicators of very unhealthy group minds – so unhealthy as to be called insane, broken. So broken it doesn’t feel right to call them minds at all.

So to create a group mind it is really necessary to create a healthy group mind.

The path to healthy group minds has this kind of progression:

Listening, empathy, acceptance, mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual appreciation (love), collaboration (team-work), the ability to make whole-group decisions and take whole-group action even when there is uncertainty, the ability to adapt, grow, and prosper together.

The first step is simply listening. All the rest of the steps are about harmonizing.

To be able to really listen is a sign of great mental and spiritual health. To really listen, one has to step back from dearly-held positions (at least temporarily).

This is ultimately a deeply spiritual practice: “Letting go,” “Trusting God” “Trusting Life”, “Transcending the ego.,” – ultimately caring more about the whole, and each other, rather than about our own little (but important) part.

For many (most) it is not at all easy. But there are ways that we, together, can make it easier.

Part Two: Imagine a Conversation that can amplify trust and collaboration, and involve millions… coming in the near future.

On this eve of Federal Government Shutdown, gridlockis on my mind for a moment. So here’s a thought (that has probably been thunk before).

Currently members of the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives are under pressure by their parties to vote strictly on party-lines. Yet this means that the members of the minority party essentially throw away their votes and miss a strategic opportunity to elect a more bi-partisan Speaker. Voters should insist that their representatives make Congress more bi-partisan by having all members vote for their *best* choice from the majority party.

This seems like a good recipe for choosing a more collaborative Speaker. House Speakers are way too powerful to be controlled by a single party. Getting the House to work together should be the Speaker’s job.

And as we sometimes remember, the Speaker is also 2nd in line for becoming President.

Election campaign funding is, however, complex, and likely to be hard to come up with the right formula that can’t be skirted by new methods. So it will take take longer to enact.

Reforming the way top Congressional leaders are chosen (including committee chairpeople) is much easier for the public to understand and get behind. There may even be enough Senators and Representatives who are sick of gridlock and could get behind the idea as well.

Please Sign this Petition asking Democrats and Moderate Republicans to elect a bi-partisan Speaker of the House.

The author of the post above inspected WDYTT’s story sources and found biased distortions on the part of Whydontyoutrythis editors in reporting those sources. (I have not verified his conclusion.)

Most of their articles seem anti-big government and big-corporations, anti-GMO, anti-big-pharma, etc. And yet they also have other articles that claim to have evidence that Global Warming theory and research is biased and wrong and full of lies, for example this article:

I can’t help wondering if their anti-big-corporation and spiritual miracle articles are baits to get progressive cause supporters to read anti-global warming articles. But wondering isn’t enough to reach a conclusion. If you know more about them, please let me know.

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I recently contributed a post with the title above to the Verifeed blog. Verifeed is a new company and service that is helping make our feeds and conversations more relevant and our sources more credible.

I want to be able to have conversations about things that are important to me, with people I like, and with others I’d like if I knew them better;

And I would like to be able to see the local and global connections between my conversations and the conversations of others who share my interests, but who don’t always share my perspectives.

That is, (getting further out), I would like to see how my thinking and conversations fit with the rest of the conversations in my communities and the world. Are we each getting only a small part of the picture; are we getting more or less fragmented; are we actually learning from each other – and if so, what are we learning. Etc.

Resources that have been targeted for privatized include schools, water systems, sewer systems, trash disposal, Social Security and Medicare, parks and recreation, transportation, military operations, and even the legislative process itself, that is, drafting laws that govern our states and local governments (see footnote at bottom).

Privatization is done in the name of efficiency, and there are some cases where it can be useful.

There are also many cases where the major effect of privatization has been to enrich private companies at public (taxpayer) expense.

Why would any democratically elected legislator transfer an important public resource to private companies?

To answer this question, here is where “follow the money” comes into play. It’s important to find out: ‘Who is profiting from the privatization?’

Do legislators who vote for a privatization bill get re-election funding (and other perks) from the companies or individuals who profit from the legislation?

Does the privatization create higher value and efficiencies with an important overall benefit for the public? Or does it create higher costs to the public and/or lower value delivered by those who operate the privatized resource?

ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) is a private association, that drafts legislation that is then introduced into state legislatures all across the country. Many of these bills have been enacted into law.

Privatization of public services and resources is a major focus of legislation drafted and promoted by ALEC. ALEC is funded primarily by corporate sponsors.

It is accurate to say that state legislatures that introduce bills drafted by ALEC are outsourcing a crucial part of the legislative process to the private companies who sponsor ALEC and take a lead in proposing, pitching, and drafting legislation.

More information about ALEC can be found on this post by the Center for Media and Democracy. A great deal of valuable research has been done to “follow the money” that flows through ALEC and ALEC’s private sector sponsors.

This is the second part in a series about principles for restoring democracy. The first part can be found here.

Obviously a lot of people are working on this. These ideas are a brief compilation of some of the best solutions.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, conservative, progressive, and moderate, want a well-functioning democratic government. But we have different definitions for what that means – because we use different terms and listen to different sources, and because wedon’t listen well to each other.

This has been a perfect opportunity for special interests and corruption to whittle away at “government for the people and by the people” and to shift our democracy to either government for the special interests and by the special interests, or else to gridlock.

The principles that make corruption work are: “divide and conquer” (pit citizen against citizen) and “hide the true motives” (pretend to be interested in “reforming” government but in actuality work for one’s own profit and special interests).

To protect and restore real democracy, we the people need to re-unite, and to do that we need to explore and expose the corruption that has drastically weakened democratic government.

There are a few principles that can guide us:

To expose corruption:Verify the facts and Follow the money.

To restore democracy:Listen to each otherand Engage in authentic dialogue.

To regenerate government: Elect candidates who care about all Americans.This means we must elect people who are not beholden to special interests and mega-contributions from super-wealthy people and corporations.

These are principles that we can all agree on. Armed with these we can expose corruption, start dialoguing with each other, and restore democracy.

The 2nd post in this serieswill expand on “Follow the money” using privatization of public resources as an example.